The Lord of the Rings on HD Drool thread

[phranctoast]

http://dvd.ign.com/articles/746/746952p1.html

November 20, 2006 - The news broke on Monday that director Peter Jackson will likely not be returning to the land of Middle-earth to direct the proposed Lord of the Rings prequels as a result of the lawsuit between the helmer and studio New Line. One can't help but wonder then where that leaves the proposed high-definition DVD set of the LOTR trilogy that has been rumored for some time now.

Coincidentally, IGN just interviewed Jackson's DVD producer and documentarian Michael Pellerin last week about the new King Kong extended edition release. Pellerin is Jackson's point man when it comes to DVD, and while he was careful to explain that he doesn't know when or how the high-def LOTR set might come about, he was able to give us a preview of what such a set will likely contain.

"On Lord of the Rings, we have always saved stuff for the inevitable HD box set," says Pellerin. "We've saved some really critical [bonus materials]. A long time ago, we knew that they were eventually going to release this thing as a box set on HD. This is going to happen, so that's that. You know the studio's going to do that anyway, because that's how they make money. So on Lord of the Rings we have this whole treasure chest, war chest, of material. Some of the coolest and funniest stuff we saved for the inevitable box set. Really, Lord of the Rings the final chapter is still waiting to be written."

Chief among those new bonus features will be a documentary directed by Jackson himself.

"One of the things that Peter has always planned, since the beginning of Rings — this is nothing new — he always planned to someday sit down and do a feature documentary on the making of The Lord of the Rings from his point of view," says Pellerin. "A director's journey, made by Peter Jackson, 'Hey, here's my story. Here's what I did. Here's what happened.' Really the kind of tell-all, sort of blood and guts story going through the entire thing, from how the project got initiated straight through production, but all from Peter's point of view, which I think would be fascinating. I've done tons of making-of work and Costa [Botes] did his fly on the wall documentaries, but to have something directly from Peter… I've heard some of his stories that have never seen the light of day, and some of them are just [amazing]. I know that he'll want to do that."

For naysayers who see such a release as yet another double-dip, Pellerin says that the makers of the original DVD sets couldn't have fit more material on those releases even if they had tried. There was, he says, quite simply not enough room on those sets, and it would have taken something like a six-disc package per movie to fit the bulk of the worthy extras onto just one release. So Pellerin and Jackson both share one mantra when it comes to multiple releases of the same movie: Don't repeat anything.

"When people here about another Lord of the Rings set, they go, 'Oh God, haven't they done it all?'" says the DVD producer. "And then when you start to do the math, you go, 'Did you ever see one deleted scene? Or one gag reel, or anything funny or interesting that's kind of off the beaten path like that? You haven't.' And the reason is we're saving it all. You've never seen the deleted scenes, which are legion. You've never seen the gag reels, which are huge."

As for when the set will arrive, Pellerin can't say. There's no official word on the project, though he says that there's been a bit of talk with New Line about the set, and the studio has had its first initial talks with Jackson about it. Of course, this was all before the LOTR prequel news broke today, and the animosity between the filmmaker and New Line had become so public. Regardless, it seems obvious that any future LOTR set will require Jackson's input.

"It's a matter of timing, and when can Peter [do it]," says Pellerin. "Peter has always been heavily involved with the DVDs. He's always involved in thinking them up, doing the interviews, reviewing cuts every step of the way, giving notes. So these aren't hands-off things. That being said, the HD set is going to be him literally in the editing room every day doing this thing. It's like a Peter Jackson project. So it's really a matter of when he's going to be available to sit down and dedicate the time to do that. I think there's 10 million feet of footage on Lord of the Rings. He wants to have access to all of it to do this, so it'll be pretty epic."